BtZ42 Section six. PP 38-42 (miller edition)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Even with the Hollywood meet-cute aspects, it's hard not to take the romance - They're in love - at face value. Jessica is never developed much as a character, which counters the trend in Hollywood rom-coms of the 30s and 40s (the skirt-lifting hitchhike is a trope used in It Happened One Night. And maybe Sullivan's Travels?) But later in the book she's recast as the cold-hearted status-husband-seeking Bitch (it's hinted at in the seance scene, but dropped in this and the following Roger-Jessica scenes). 

Did Pynchon have it planned all along? Hard to say. Maybe he has her turn in the Counterforce section of the book just to emphasize what Roger is up against. At any rate, between being undeveloped first, and then bitchified, she's one of the least likable of the not strictly villainous (Gerda) female characters in the book. It seems, possibly, that she's the foremother of all of Pynchon's later fascist-loving women.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>Sent: Apr 20, 2016 9:24 AM
>To: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
>Cc: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: BtZ42 Section six. PP 38-42 (miller edition)
>
>But my romantic reading does have a problem w P's clear Hollywood Rom Com text. Where do we come down on this? For me, it is in the context of some kind of real lasting love organically happening because of peacetime normal courtships but...milages vary. 
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Apr 20, 2016, at 7:40 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When I first read this part of GR in my 20s I thought Roger and
>> Jessica were the kind of fictional couple meant to offer hope or at
>> least some optimism for the reader. "They are in love. Fuck the war."
>> That now seems to me more ironic. Hollywood love is not an effective
>> anti-war strategy. Connect with AN ARMY OF LOVERS CAN BE BEATEN,
>> later. Or how Pirate, who we might figure is our hero at first,
>> becomes so sexually/politically manipulable so quickly. How so many of
>> these players are sexual marionettes!
>> 
>> I'm not arguing that Pynchon is arguing anything, but read in the
>> light of 1970s free love and the political shit going on and the
>> uneasy relationships between the sexual revolution and feminism and I
>> feel this whole thread of the novel records a pulse we have yet to
>> gauge.
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 8:30 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Not much happens, but a fair amount gets stated (framed). Roger & Jessica are driving east to meet Pointsman and be part of his dognapping scheme. But they "want to be together, in bed, at rest, in love" ( tied up at the end of the section with another scene of being together, "touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting".   This ending with the memorable "they are in love. Fuck the war". )
>>> We get the flashback story of their cute meet. Busted bike, slip and thighs showing, rom com initial put downs (P has signaled the Hollywood lensing) bike smashed and she's " in his power."
>>> UTTERLY. (But Roger knows she isn't)
>>> Then a rocket lands. The War intrudes.
>>> We learn more about Roger ( which we will get to elsewhere)
>>> Then we are with First Responders and the bombed.
>>> "War's state"
>>> Roger is part of The White Visitation and The Home Front is..."fiction and a lie".
>>> Fuck the war.
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone-
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>-
>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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